Conveyors commonly used in the food and packaging industries (in particular soft drink manufacturing facilities, breweries, fruit juice manufacturing facilities, dairies, etc.) generally require periodic cleaning in order to maintain the conveyor in a sanitary condition. This cleanliness requirement in turn requires the application of various cleaning ingredients such as detergents, sanitizers, bactericides, slimicides, etc. A simple, yet very time and labor intensive practice is to apply these cleaning ingredients to the conveyor system manually, either by high pressure hot water, steam, or other methods. Additionally, there is a tendency in manual cleaning to over-apply and waste the cleaning products. This manual practice is both expensive, cumbersome and dangerous and may not provide an adequately clean conveyor belt. The art recognizes a need for improved methods and apparatus. U.S. Pat. No. 5,372,243 provides an alternative to the above described cleaning method. King teaches a pneumatically controlled cleaning and rinsing system for conveyors. The valves for providing cleaning and rinsing ingredients are pneumatically actuated, as are the timers and sequencer valves. Pneumatically controlled and actuated equipment is stressed because of the desire to eliminate corrosion of electrical equipment and components in wet environments.
Others have provided alternate conveyor cleaning and/or lubricating systems to replace systems that include electrical equipment. U.S. Pat. No. 5,129,481 describes an apparatus and method for lubricating conveyors and belts used in the food industry comprising a device including valves which are alternately opened and closed by an actuating device driven from the conveyor movement. The valves supply a lubricant which is fed to output nozzles for spraying onto the conveyors for lubricating purposes, and the valves will only feed lubricant when the conveyor is moving. Alternately, U.S. Pat. No. 5,289,899 teaches an air-driven delay valve or relay, which is driven from the conveyor system, and which connects to a counter which controls the valve that passes lubricant in a pulsating or intermittent fashion.
However, pneumatically controlled systems, such as those described above, can be inaccurate, for example, in their time measurement and fluid dispensing, leading to ineffective cleaning and/or lubricating of the conveyor and wasted supplies. A substantial need exists for a cleaning and lubricating system for conveyors that is simple, accurate, versatile, reliable, and is easy to maintain.